After seven years of being lost in the wilderness of oppositional presidential
politics, Democrats now seem well positioned to do in 2008 what they failed
to do in 2004: Replace a rogue cowboy president with a new president capable
of uniting the country and resetting the nation's foreign policy and global
reputation. The Press-Citizen Editorial Board thinks Illinois Sen. Barack
Obama is the best candidate in a well qualified field of Democrats to make
those long overdue changes. We endorse his candidacy enthusiastically.

In the past few months, Iowa City area voters have had multiple opportunities
to learn about the strengths of each of Obama's Democratic rivals:

• Delaware Sen. Joe Biden brings an impressive domestic legislative
record that is outshone only by his expertise as a foreign policy adviser.

• Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd provides a familial perspective on how
the U.S.'s moral authority in the world has sunk from its highpoint (when
Dodd's father was a prosecutor in the Nuremberg Trials) to its nadir (when
the Bush Administration refused to abide by the Geneva Conventions and
decided to house "enemy combatants" in Guantanamo Bay).

• New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton draws from her experience as
a key adviser during her husband's presidency and her seven years on Capitol
Hill representing the interests of New York's various population groups.

• New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson draws upon experience even wider and
deeper than Clinton's and offers real world examples from the state he
has governed since 2003.

• And former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards brings a needed attention
to the social, economic and cultural factors that are widening the divide
between the "Two Americas."

But the more Biden, Dodd and Clinton draw upon their experience in the
internecine personal battles within Washington or between world leaders,
the more voters identify them with the broken political system in which
they have gained their experience. And the more Richardson and Edwards
lay claim to an outsider status, the more they risk having their call for
change get lost in their rhetoric -- which is what seems to have happened
especially to Edwards in this campaign.

Obama stands tall among this already strong group as both the candidate
of hope and the candidate of change we can believe in.

U.S. image abroad

We respect the experience that Clinton, Dodd, Biden and Richardson bring
to the table in terms of their past meetings with world leaders. But we
have to agree with Obama that foreign policy and diplomacy is more than
the personal interactions of a few diplomats and leaders projected across
a geo-political screen. As Obama told the editorial board, "structuring
the actual conversation ... (and) convening the leaders is the easy part."

The hard part is knowing the people -- whether it's those Americans
living the relatively average life that he and his wife lived until just
a few years ago, whether it's the people who live in the south side Chicago
neighborhoods in which Obama was an organizer, or whether it's the people
who live in the same isolated Kenyan village as Obama's grandmother.

Although Obama's fellow candidates scoff that living in Indonesia for
four years as a child doesn't prepare him for the complexities of foreign
affairs, many people throughout the globe will take comfort knowing that
the U.S. president has lived in and knows well the most populous Muslim
country in the world. It will help Obama successfully convene a meeting
of Muslim leaders within his first year in office.

Of course, winning over the hearts and minds of billions of skeptical
Muslims will be much easier after President Obama closes Guantanamo Bay
and begins a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops in Iraq.

U.S. image at home

Obama is also right that resetting the world's view of the U.S. begins
with making our government more transparent. As a senator, he's worked
to visibly link members of Congress to their roads to nowhere and to their
Iowan rain forests. As president, he will hold large-scale, open discussions
on the issues facing Americans in the 21st century: health care, climate
change, comprehensive immigration reform, border security, tax policy,
education and economic development.

Unlike the health care overhaul attempted during Bill Clinton's administration,
for example, Obama has pledged to hold open meetings and conferences for
all the nation to see. Bringing together doctors, nurses, patients and
hospital administrators -- as well as representatives of the drug and insurance
companies -- Obama will produce a plan that moves beyond the limits of
backroom politics.

It's true that a single-payer health care system would make the most
sense if the U.S. were establishing a system from scratch. But Obama understands
that, given more than half-century history of employer-provided health
care and its supporting industry, the nation can't easily make a 180-degree
turn. Nor can citizens wait around for some ideologically pure system to
be developed. Because people need help now, Obama's plan provides the best
alternative: Establishing a government system that covers those ineligible
for private care and making it effective enough that others might eventually
look to join it.

He will use the bully pulpit of the presidency to likewise address climate
change, education and economic opportunity.

Politics of hope, unity

During the recent Des Moines Register debate, Obama joked that he is
looking forward to Clinton serving as his presidential adviser. But we
hope he is serious about drawing upon the wealth of experience and talent
represented in his presidential rivals.

Indeed, the first test of Obama's role as a true uniter will be to bring
together his party into a winning coalition in November 2008. In that process,
we urge him to infuse his campaign with a little more of Edwards' public
focus on poverty -- while avoiding the flights of populist rhetoric that
has made Edwards' good analysis sometimes too easy for critics to dismiss.

Obama has the right vision for a new national politics and a new global
reputation. He now needs voters and supporters who will help him transform
that vision into reality. It's a transformation that should have started
three years ago. Neither the nation nor the world can wait any longer.

We invited any presidential
candidate coming to the Iowa City area to meet with the board and said
we would be endorsing in both races. Emails were sent with follow
up calls to the candidates' Iowa offices. We also made it clear to
the county party chairs that we wanted to sit down with every candidate.
At that time, we decided abide our our longstanding practice of only endorsing
those candidates who come for an interview. Sometime in the last
month, we did extend the option of a conference call (which none of the
candidates took us up on).

Soon after each candidate
appeared, I (as the opinion editor) published a profile/analysis column.
These include:

In the meantime, board members
kept up on the news, watched the debates and did their own research on
the candidates. Because we had met with all the Democratic candidates
except Kucinich and Gravel (Kucinich had been invited, Gravel hadn't because
he never came to the area) -- in addition to our individual research --
we felt confident in giving an "enthusiastic" endorsement to Sen. Obama.

When it became clear that
we would not have a representative sampling of the Republican candidates,
we decided to make another attempt to get at least phone interviews with
the key candidates, and then decided to abide by our own rules. Given
the choice between Huckabee and Paul, we chose to endorse Huckabee conditionally
-- raising some of our reservations about his candidacy.